Started my daily ficlets to make the hiatus pass, then decided to keep going with a 2nd cycle, and then a 3rd, 4th, etc through 64th cycle. Now cycle 65!

"And What If We Met"
(Beiste &) Ewan (OC; Damian McGinty), Sugar
Beiste & Ewan series
(all series now listed under the communities tab in my profile)

It hadn't been long, talking to this Sugar in his dream, before his natural instincts toward her kicked in. And when she mentioned how her locker door was jammed, he offered himself to help her out.

"It's this way," she led him, and he followed, pretending like he didn't know exactly where her locker was. She stood in front of the lock and reached for it, but then paused and looked to him. He looked back, clueless, until she motioned with her eyes. Look away.

"Right, sorry," he turned around. "Sixteen, twenty-two, nine…" he mumbled under his breath. He took his cue to turn back when he heard her struggling with the door.

"See?"

"Don't worry, it does it all the time," he assured her, then, "… back home. Mine does that too," he covered. "All you need to do is…" he gave a sharp tug and within instants the door released and swung open. Sugar was amazed, unaware that, in reality, he'd done this maneuver for her more times than he could count. He would ask himself sometimes why she didn't just get a different locker, but then he would smile and think maybe the reason she wasn't moving was because she liked their two lockers being in proximity of one another.

"Wow, you're like a magician or something…" Sugar gasped. Just so long as you don't say leprechaun…

"It wasn't that bad," he shrugged humbly.

"No, hey, don't write yourself off. This deserves a reward."

"It does?" he asked.

"Yes. Meet me at the mall after school, I'll buy you ice cream or something. Do you know how to get to the mall?" she wondered, looking at the supposed tourist.

"I think I can manage," he smiled, and apparently he could manage, because the next moment his eyes opened he was standing in the mall, and she was coming toward him.

"You made it! I thought you might get lost and I'd have to make posters like 'Have you seen this Irish boy?'" He laughed, and she did as well.

"I'm good with directions," he gave as his excuse, instead of 'I've been living here for months now, and I've been to this mall with you many times.'

"Directions and lockers, too. What else can you do?" she asked.

"I clean pools," he nodded, then paused, frowning. "I don't know why I said that…" he told himself.

"That's… fun?" Sugar hesitated.

"I don't know," he shrugged, and after a moment she was smiling again.

"Come on, I owe you an ice cream."

"Would the parents of Timothy Carroll please report to the information desk?"

The notice over the PA had come just as they were receiving their orders at the ice cream stand. Ewan looked up, blinking. He knew that name, and in his head it was accompanied with the picture of a small boy and the sound of a ball bouncing against the ground.

"Are you alright?" Sugar asked him, and he blinked.

"Yes, I… Brain freeze," he thought to say.

"You haven't even had any yet," she pointed out. "Are you sure you should be having it?" The boy with proximity brain freeze, that'll charm her.

"It's just an expression, it's not literally frozen, it's just… stuck. But I'm fine now," he promised, leading her to somewhere so they could sit.

"How long are you going to be here for?" Sugar asked him.

"I don't know exactly…" To her it could seem like days, but he had a tendency of skipping several hours at a time, so he couldn't really say.

"Well, while you're here, maybe we could hang out some more," she offered.

"We could?" he was surprised, but then not really, which made him smile again.

"You're cute, and I like to play host, so why not?"

"To go to… museums and all that?" he wondered, and she chuckled.

"No, something fun," she promised. "So what do you think?"

Apparently what he thought was that it sounded like a great idea, because for the next little while, he would skip from one activity to the next with her. They had their ice cream, they shopped, they went to see a movie, they went to dinner, then what must have been another day they went swimming together – he'd seen what he thought was Puck and the lost boy again, but when he'd turn around they would be gone – and then they'd gone and gotten ice cream again…

The frenzy had slowed to a stop when they walked past a shop window and he saw a display of picture frames. In one of them there was a picture that didn't belong, because it was his. It was the one he kept right on his nightstand, of himself and his mother and father when he was ten. He stared long and hard at it. And he felt his stomach drop.

What was he doing? He had his parents back now, even if they were just a very realistic dream. He could have spent all this time with them, but instead he was here. He had no way of knowing when exactly he would wake up from this, and when he did, they would be gone again. He loved being here with Sugar, loved her, but… He was forgetting them, in so many ways. And that wasn't how it should be.

"Ewan?" Sugar's voice made him look away from the frames, and when he looked again, the picture was gone, replaced by one of those generic sample pictures. "Do you want that frame?"

"What? No, I…"

"You've been staring at it for a while. I do that with shoes and stuff like that," she smirked.

"Sugar, I'm sorry, I need to go home now. My parents will be expecting me." It was only sort of a lie, he figured. He didn't want her to think he was ditching her, because under normal circumstances he could have stayed with her on and on, for hours on end.

"Sure, I'll drive you. But first we finish this," she pointed to their ice cream and he smiled.

"Good idea."

THE END

A/N: This is a one-shot ficlet, which means that signing up for story alert will not bring you any alerts.
In the event of a sequel, the story will be separate from this one. And as chapter stories go, they are
always clearly indicated as such [ex: "Days 204-210" in the summary] Thank you!